Random Things You Didn’t Know About '90s Sitcom Stars (15 items)

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  (#4) Matt LeBlanc Blacked Out The Night Before His Audition And Knocked A ‘Chunk’ Of His Nose Off On The Toilet

  How would Friends have been different if Louis Mandylor - not Matt LeBlanc - had been cast in the role of Joey? 

  Well, according to Kevin Bright, one of the show's directors, the decision on whether to cast Mandylor or LeBlanc pretty much came down to the wire. Oddly, LeBlanc's decision to go out drinking with a friend on the night before his final audition was - at least in part - responsible for him winning the role.

  After the night of drinking, LeBlanc woke up in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom. "I got up too fast, and - I can't believe I'm telling you this - I kind of blacked out, as you do, and fell face-first into the toilet," he explained. "I hit my nose on the bottom of the toilet seat and a huge chunk of meat came off my nose. I'm looking in the mirror, and it's bleeding," the actor told Newsweek.

  The accident left him with a distinct scar on his face. When he showed up for his audition, he told Friends' creator Marta Kauffman the truth about how he had injured himself - and she responded by offering him the role!

  However, Mandylor did end up getting to play Joey - sort of. In the Season 6 episode, "The One with the Unagi," LeBlanc hires a lookalike to enter a medical research test for him with the goal of getting the $2,000 that would be paid to the participants. The part of  "Fake Joey" was played by Mandylor. 
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  (#13) Mark Curry Actually Practiced With The Golden State Warriors

  On Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Mark Curry played a high school teacher who, after not making it to the NBA out of college, eventually gets a tryout with the Golden State Warriors. The actor, who is a native of Oakland, CA, was a big fan of his hometown team, and he was both excited and nervous when he was told he would get to practice with the actual team as part of the storyline.

  In an Instagram Live chat with former NBA player Ryan Hollins, Curry spoke about how he was late to his first practice with the team because the arena guards didn't believe he was there for an actual tryout. Don Nelson was Golden State's head coach at the time, and the first thing he did was tell Curry to attempt a free throw - if he missed it, everyone on the team except for the actor would have to run.

  "[Warriors' All-Star guard] Tim Hardaway [Sr.] said, 'MF, you better make it.' {Fellow Golden State player] Tyrone Hill said, 'I will whip your a**,' and I step up like a G and make the shot," Curry told Hollins.

  Later in that same practice, "I tried to dunk on Tim Hardaway [Sr.]. I come through, and he [struck me] so hard. I thought I broke my neck. I said I broke my neck, I laid there [on the ground], and that was the Golden State situation."
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  (#9) Julia Louis-Dreyfus Has Never Watched The Pilot Episode Of 'Seinfeld'

  Julia Louis-Dreyfus rose to fame by playing Elaine Benes, the best friend/ex-girlfriend of the title character, on Seinfeld. Oddly, she does not appear in the pilot episode - the main female character was originally supposed to be Claire, the server at Pete's Luncheonette. But when NBC said it would only pick up the show if a stronger female character was added, Larry David reached out to Louis-Dreyfus, whom he had met when they both worked on Saturday Night Live. She ended up beating out Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally for the role of Elaine.

  Allegedly, Louis-Dreyfus has never seen the Seinfeld pilot episode. The reason why? Superstition.
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  (#5) Frasier's Brother Was Only Created After A Casting Director Noticed David Hyde Pierce's Resemblance To Kelsey Grammer

  If it wasn't for the fact that he resembled his future castmate, David Hyde Pierce may have never portrayed Niles Crane, the iconic role that earned the actor four Emmy Awards.

  In fact, there was no definite plan to even give Frasier Crane a sibling until an assistant casting director showed the series creators a headshot of Hyde Pierce, saying:

  "Doesn’t he look like Kelsey [Grammer] did 10 years ago?"

  Impressed by the resemblance, Frasier's creators did some digging into the actor's past roles. After seeing him portray a quiet, suicidal Congressman in the short-lived sitcom The Powers That Be, they set up a meeting with Hyde Pierce. It only took a brief interview to convince them to offer him the newly created role of Frasier Crane's younger brother.

  "I met with the producers, and we just talked for about 45 minutes, about what the brother might be,” Pierce recalls. “Niles was going to be a Jungian and Frasier was going to be a Freudian - things like that were tossed around. Not long after that, they offered me the part, and I thought, ‘What part?’ I hadn’t seen a script," Hyde Pierce told the Los Angeles Times in 1998.
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  (#2) Roseanne And John Goodman Acted Like An Old Married Couple So Naturally, He Was The Only Actor They Auditioned For The Role Of Barr's Husband

  In 1987, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner were working as executive producers on The Cosby Show when they commissioned Matt Williams to write a pilot script for a potential series about a white working-class family. They then signed stand-up comic Roseanne Barr to be the female lead. Because she was an inexperienced actor, the plan was to cast skilled, experienced actors in the other roles, so that Barr could learn from them.

  According to Barr, John Goodman was the only actor who actually read for the part of her husband. "There were more [auditions] planned, but the second I met [Goodman], I fell in love with him," the actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2018.

  "I went in there, and it was just easy as pie," Goodman agreed. "We got along great. For some reason, I just knew I had the job."

  Matt Williams agreed with Barr and Goodman that there had been an immediate connection between the two actors: "We brought him [Goodman] in the room, he looked at Roseanne, and said, 'Scoot over,'" he told EW. "She said, 'Shut up,' he plopped down, and it was like they had been married for 16 years."

  The chemistry between the lead actors paid off big time, as Roseanne became a huge hit for ABC, ranking in the Top 5 of the Nielsen ratings in each of its first six seasons.
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  (#15) 'Will & Grace' Star Eric McCormack Said His Weight Cost Him Acting Jobs

  Eric McCormack shot to fame and won an Emmy Award for playing Will Truman on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. He played the role from 1998 to 2006 (and from 2017 to 2020 in the reboot of the show). But before being cast in Will & Grace, McCormack was a struggling actor whose weight cost him opportunities in image-obsessed Hollywood.

  In 1997, he was in line to get cast in the [short-lived] Jenny McCarthy sitcom Jenny. Before his final audition, McCormack's then-manager Joan Hyland callously told him, "You’ve got two weeks … get your face back."

  The actor said it marked a "very big turning point" in his career, joking that it had been easy to hide behind a beard and heavy layers of clothing while living in Calgary, Canada. But when he shaved off the beard, he said, "Wow! I was not going to be on Melrose Place the next day, let’s put it that way."

  McCormack decided to lose some weight, and whether or not it was an actual facto, he ended up having a successful audition.

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